Results: Battery Testing
Our battery life metric currently consists of one test: video playback. We chose this because it's one of the most commonly cited statistics by device manufacturers, and is relatively easy to check. The video drain is simply the Sintel 3D animated trailer looped endlessly in MXPlayer with the phone's display calibrated to a brightness of 200 nits.
Pretty darned impressive. This Nexus 5 gets a little over eight hours of continuous playback, and that last 15% held on for over one-eighth of that time. It was nail-biting. Compared to its nearest relative, the LG G2, which has a larger battery (3000 mAh versus the Nexus 5's 2300 mAh), that's a solid result, and it beats out the other devices in our comparison. This is even more impressive when you consider that EVGA's Tegra Note tablet has extended power-saving in the form of Prism, a lower-resolution display, and a much much larger 4100 mAh battery. In terms of daily usage, we've managed to go a full day of normal use (sans gaming) without a recharge. Once you add gaming to that equation the battery drains a lot faster.